Ode to Mitch
Smells shuffle noxiously, not fusty
or rancid like local organics afloat
over the paper manufacturing plant,
but some process foreign, imported
stink from our native robber baron
returned now, to invest in our town
and vault America to new greatness.
Crowds assemble to attend the man,
greet him with nosegays swaddling
their noses, cackles convulsing their
voices, withering throats of gratitude.
Hold! He speaks: “Fellow citizens,
ladies and gentlemen, Republicans,
let us pray for our glorious leader
who has taught us as Americans how
we should act in our communities and
in the world! God bless Mr. Trump!”
“Mitch, what is that disgusting smell?”
Gestures at History
There comes a point at which my history
includes me: Trump asserts dictatorship;
I am altered against my will; neighbors,
never my intimates, reveal as stick people;
my time-space whirls on a kaleidoscope,
flamboyant, evocative, but only distracting.
A bigot lynches a man to reach namelessness:
History answers to will; apathy claims a coup.
Tell Me What I Should Believe
At this time public secondary school teachers began
to realize that the people were not being governed by
honest elected officials. This may have always been
obvious to some, since the nation’s creation, but most
took the politics as entertaining palaver, not war only
mastered by disingenuity at best, criminality at worst.
What did inattention at home permit? Congress wrote
its own rules, biased lawyers wrote the laws to shield
themselves almost every time. The criminal who rules
on privilege, who founds corroborative institutions as
voluntary bylaw, expects that only the public will kick,
will no longer run them on a rail out of town. I contend
this has actually never been a secret, but acts politicians
do in the guise of governance, injure many on the other
side, to be avenged when their side assumes power. And
the winners celebrate each other’s pain and humiliation
as a national game. (See party conventions.) Occasionally
as part and parcel of their campaigns we ask their beliefs.
Trump Pulls the Double Switch, His Favorite Con
At that time, when I was an adolescent and I thought
like an adolescent, and talked…, I mostly played ball
of various kinds. I need not identify them because I
was good for my school, but won only irregularly. By
standards of our era future athletes would not look to
1963 boys’ team players for any inspiration. This fact
cannot be too deflating because our rivals for memory
were some impressive Cardinal squads, Hawks squads.
Billiken squads, and any number of city schools much
larger and wealthier than ours. We sometimes received
a box score in the Post Dispatch or the Globe, but those
teams got large spreads in both papers. With benefit of
hindsight, however, I don’t think it likely that publicity
for those teams and athletes was little more important
than diversion for people beleaguered by humidity and
debilitating heat that prodded them to drink Budweiser
for relief. As adolescents that was an illegal alternative.
I matured to now, a very important instant when history
broadened to include me too: Trump asserts dictatorship;
I have grown to recognize he alters us against our wills.